coffee spoons
by flamingotown
Summary: Alec's life is boring and repetitive. At least until the tall, dark, glitter-drenched stranger walks into the cafe where he works at. After all, there are a lot of things a casually dropped smile, a jacket and a cup of chai latte can do. Coffeeshop AU Malec.
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer: I do not own TMI. If I did, it would be Magnus Bane: The Musical. I also do not own the cover image. Alec and Magnus are both 19 and mundane in this fic. Inspired by the amazing Klaine Serendipity AU by ariablair.**

* * *

**"****_I have measured out my life with coffee spoons." -T.S Eliot_**

* * *

Sometimes there are glitches in the universe.

Sometimes when the snow sets in and the city goes in circles, and your security dissipates into the snow, miracles do happen.

Sometimes there's a certain magic about the way New York unfurls slowly and your universe unfurls with it. There's a certain allure, about the way the universe sings out its anthem of serendipity, and sometimes, just _sometimes,_ all it takes is a casually dropped smile, a jacket, and a cup of chai latte.

* * *

Alec Lightwood's Guide to Surviving the Universe

1. Never maintain eye contact for more than 3 seconds.

2. Never let anything degrade you.

3. Never draw attention to yourself.

4. And never, _ever,_ trust whipped cream.

* * *

Alec had been a part-time barista for four years now- he knew the inner workings of making milk just perfectly steamed (or skimmed); what to do for coffee to form two distinct layers; and how to pipe beans on cappuccino just so. He liked his job- it was a steady repetition, day after day, only being continuously refined, and at night, all he would do was daydream and draw out more pipe designs and inhale pickles.

Because that was, well, how Alec Lightwood just was.

Sometimes his sister would burst into his apartment and moan that he didn't have enough human interaction, that he had a Face for a Reason so _why_ didn't he use it, but Alec was happy how he was.

Until the dark-skinned, glitter-doused stranger walked in.

* * *

It was raining more than snowing, and the snow was turning into a sort of weird, disgusting slush obscuring the still-blazing neon. The snow stuck onto clothes, and inside jacket pockets, and everywhere you wouldn't want watery sludge to be on. The coffeeshop on Middle Street was brimming with sleet-and-trenchcoat-covered people who left wet trails on the ground, but the warm strings of lights and DIY setup and cheery Europop were enough to keep everyone happy. Alec preferred to think that the coffeeshop was a humble, fuzzy abode for them, just like it was for him.

Alec was just piping hazelnut whipped cream (he _hated_ whipped cream) and contemplating on the benefits of adding spaghetti to the menu, when _he_ walked in.

He was dripping in sludge, which was made even worse by the fact that he was covered from head to toe in tight, sequined black clothes. And a phoenix-printed silk jacket.

Alec was wondering why he was so obsessed with jackets when he realised that the whipped cream was overflowing and damaging his perfect duck-printed tea cloth.

He hated whipped cream.

The stranger walked closer to the counter and Alec wondered why he still looked so glamorous, even with his hair dripping with sludge. His charm meter steadily increased when he broke into a boyish grin, green cat eyes twinkling. Isabel should have taken lessons from him.

"May I have a tall chai latte to go, please?"

Alec swallowed.

He nodded and moved to clear up the whipped cream on the counter. Then he whipped around again.

"I'm sorry- what's your name?"

"Magnus. Magnus Bane."

Alec thought it was a pretty name, and he proceeded to write it on the cup with the overflowing whipped cream.

He hated whipped cream.

* * *

After all the mess had cleared up, Alec didn't see Magnus Bane for a week. Some part of him wished to meet him again- it wasn't every day that oh-so-boring Alec Lightwood found a drenched, glitter-soaked, charming stranger in the coffeeshop. The universe rumbled; and Alec began to crave difference. For starters, he began to actually eat his pickles, and not just put his face up to the jars to sniff them. When Isabel came over on Saturday, she laughed at his new taste for "adventure", and Alec felt, for the first time in his life, that he was missing a certain _something._

Funny how Magnus Bane hadn't stayed in his life for even a full five minutes.

Yet.


	2. Chapter 2

**2.**

**Disclaimer: I still don't own TMI. Alec and Magnus are still 19, in case you've forgotten. Also, I use British spelling instead of American. Okay, so Alec is becoming a ****_little_**** weird. But still in a way, boring. That's my headcanon of him anyway, that he constantly pretends to be stiff and boring but is really secretly weird. (I mean, how else can he understand Magnus?!) I'm awfully sorry for not updating soon enough :( I've been having a lot of crammed graded assignments and I can't really manage time. I will try my very best to update faster next time. I swear. Slightly longer chapter, enjoy!**

Alec liked Wednesdays.

Wednesday was when the city stopped in its tracks and pondered about things, simply because it was in the middle of the week. Alec loved it when panicky, distraught folk left the coffeeshop with their frames glowing slightly, and he liked to think that he was spreading warmth and happiness circles throughout the city, one steaming frappe at a time.

Well, if he couldn't wear capes, at least he could brandish paper cups ferociously.

On Monday he had actually done that to fend off a potential robber. Fine- paper cups _and_ whipped cream dispensers. (He secretly took some pleasure in knowing that whipped cream wasn't only in _his _nightmares.) Alec had thought a lot about adventure recently, and it was somehow because four days ago (_had it really been only four?_) Magnus Bane, that charming, sparkling, sleet-dripping stranger walked into his coffeeshop. He had no idea why, but something about the bold glittery mascara he had on and the Phoenix-printed jacket flicked on a switch inside him that screamed for diversity.

Maybe it was the stars' way of telling him, he needed to stop being such an old man.

Whatever it was- this was an Exceptionally Good Wednesday, because his boss, Miss Fray, had kindly relented and allowed him to add a whole slew of pastas to the menu. Alec was contemplating being a barista for the rest of his life, and not just as a part-time university job. He could specialise in fettuccine and frappes, and name his coffeeshop "What the F" (because there were still certain ways in which Alec was childishly immature.)

And it was on this Exceptionally Good Wednesday, that Magnus Bane came into the coffeeshop, sat down, and ordered a tall expresso to mull over the blackness of his mood.

In fact, Alec felt the air literally sizzle and spark around him. He began to wonder if Magnus Bane had been struck by lightning, which was why he had such a hold on him. That made no sense. But nothing ever made sense about his infatuation with Magnus Bane, it was perhaps- _fate_?

Maybe it was about the way his leather jacket hugged his body tightly, that Alec could see all the contours of his frame, and the lovely way the long column of his neck swooped gracefully down, and _those tight pants_-

Alec had never been so sure of his sexuality. If he knew it before, now it was as if a huge group of ducks started glittering in his head and Dora the Explorer music started playing.

Magnus Bane barely stirred, hunched with his phone held in one hand, his whole frame just minimally holding in all the quaking. His eyes, previously so full of panache and crackly wit, were now looking hollow and world-weary. He looked so melancholy, so broken, so empty that Alec felt terrible for finding his clothes so terribly attractive.

Alec paused, then grabbed his favourite tiramisu mousse from the counter and set it down on Magnus Bane's table, before dashing back to the safety behind the counter.

He watched, as Magnus blinked, and slowly unfurled himself, yet still looking at the cake as if it were a puzzling opponent of sorts. Slowly, a soft smile spread across his face, melancholy, yes, but a smile nonetheless. He watched as Magnus spooned the cake into his mouth, and a spark turned on behind his eyes, a spark that Alec somehow _just knew,_ was quintessentially Magnus Bane. He watched as Magnus peered around slowly to see who set down the cake, and Alec felt an unhealthy blush begin to creep up his neck, so he turned and busied himself with the whipped cream dispenser.

Bad mistake. It spewed out its joy to feel his touch and whipped cream soared defiantly through the air, landing everywhere, and there was so much whipped cream lying around that Alec didn't know where to start cleaning. He was positively sure he would get fired from this. Out of the corner of his eye, he spied Magnus even chortling slightly. Blushing, he ducked his head instinctively and reached into the cupboard to grab a mop.

He hated whipped cream.

* * *

It wasn't until everyone had left and he had finished up clearing the Whipped Cream Disaster (which was probably a planned vendetta against him because of Monday's incidents) that he noticed the jacket.

Magnus' black leather jacket was still casually slung over the chair, solitarily awaiting its equally lonely owner. Not that Alec thought about Magnus' relationship status. Ever.

What would regular not-boring folk do? Keep the jacket in the coffeeshop, perhaps, or bring it to a police station's lost and found.

But as any whipped-cream-addled mind would know best, the only logical thing to do was to find Magnus Bane, and who exactly he was, and what he did.

Thus began Alec's Extremely Valiant Quest To Find Magnus Bane.


	3. Chapter 3

**3.**

**a/n: Hello there! I am the absolute best at updating fics, honestly. I constantly think about this one but I'm too lazy to write so? I'm sorry if it gets weird, I'm currently drowning myself in Vampire Weekend. Even longer chapter, yay! Warnings still apply. Enjoy your burrito!**

****UPDATE** I got a beta, it's a miracle. Thanks for putting up with me.**

* * *

There's a certain rhythm in searching, a certain sort of metronome-induced ticking about the randomness, the seemingly illogically generated method of looking that falls, strangely, but almost surely, into logic, and maybe, at the end of it all, you would see the connection running through the steps you took, quivering, through your journey; and maybe, just maybe, you find that the first place you began looking was the place you needed to go all along.

* * *

The first thing Alec did was to try and find a tag on the leather jacket, and was disappointed to see that it had none, which meant no store to pester about Magnus. So he had gone over to Isabelle, who somehow still managed to look elegant with the script for her new movie hoisted on her lap, to ask her about the style and cut of the leather jacket. She had frowned at him, peered over the edge of her Giorgio Armani glasses at the jacket, before replying that she had never quite seen a style like that, because she was Isabelle Lightwood, and she would have remembered. He had heard an edge of anger creep into her voice, and scuttled out of the room quickly, shutting the door behind him, but not before hearing her shout after him, "Whose jacket is this again?"

So Alec slunk out of the house, hoping solemnly that Isabelle would forget about the jacket (but that wasn't what normal boring people did, nicking jackets from coffeeshops, and they definitely didn't bring it around like it was a makeshift prosthetic limb. Alec- nil). He shuffled along aimlessly, passing street after street and crossing random intersections at whim, until he found himself somehow on Middle Street, and that there was a dark shadow coming closer and closer and closer to him….

There was a resounding thud as the thing that had been barreling down the sidewalk ran into him, spilled his coffee, and caused the whipped cream to go all over Alec's shirt. Alec hated whipped cream.

He picked the wayward cup of frappe from the ground, silently lamenting the loss of the coffee that the barista must have laboured over slowly, just for the perfectly-piped whipped cream to end up down Alec's shirt and not down someone's throat. He thrust the messy cup onto his hand -it felt like caramel, thought Alec with satisfaction- and into the face of the person who had spilled the coffee and looked up to find Jace.

He gasped and stuttered. "I thought you'd moved to Paris?"

Jace grinned the oh-so-Jace grin that could only be described as golden, accentuated by the gold in his eyes. "Nah, I was just pulling your leg. I couldn't stand the French beans."

"French beans aren't _French_."

Jace sighed theatrically. "And Chinese food isn't Chinese." Then he seemed to perk up. "Hey, I got persimmon whipped cream, do you want some?"

Alec wrinkled his nose. "Nobody wants pre-packaged persimmon whipped cream, idiot."

Jace laughed and threw a cloth from the satchel he conveniently carried by his side always at Alec's face, making him yelp. "I got twenty orders last week," then pointing to the cloth, "Shirt. Body. Wear." He began to saunter toward the direction he was going to in the first place, and Alec scrambled to follow him. He looked down at the whipped cream on his shirt, and then at Jace's shirt (which still smelled deliciously like him), and then the way the girls all stared at Jace with dopey eyes as he walked by, and decided Jace was a good enough distraction. He pulled his whipped-cream-smothered shirt over his head and tugged Jace's one on as quickly as he could, glancing around. The coast was clear. Everyone was too busy being infatuated with Jace to notice him.

"Last week? You were in town last week? You could have dropped me a ring or something-"

"A joke, Alec, a joke. Definition: Alec does not find it amusing."

"I'm certainly not amused, Jace. And yeah, how have you been too?"

Jace told him stories of French girls and seedy exchanges for exotic goods that Alec didn't know existed, let alone that there was a market for. He's known Jace longer than he's known anyone. Jace never really had a home, passing from foster care home to foster care home ever since his parents died in a house fire which he refused to talk about, but somehow he would always end up at the Lightwoods'. Robert and Maryse gave up after a few years, and adopted him as their legal son- only for him to disappear into the streets, peddling legal goods in a way that seemed very much illegal (everything about Jace seemed illegal, honestly) and appearing every now and then. Jace- well, Jace was Alec's best friend whom he might just have a crush on. Might have.

He was convinced Jace showing up was a good sign that he was going to go somewhere with this search,

so he showed Jace the bundled-up leather jacket and asked if he had seen it anywhere before. Jace frowned, then leaned in to inspect it closely, before announcing that it was independently designed, which meant that it wasn't under any clothing brand at all, and that if Alec was willing, Jace would buy that jacket for $50. Alec threw his hands up, exasperated, and claimed theatrically (and half-heartedly) that he had no idea why he associated himself with Jace in the first place.

Jace rolled his eyes, quipping, "I was going to give you exclusive information about that jacket, but fine."

"_What_? Tell me!"

Jace appeared bored and began filing his nails with the switchblade from his pocket. "I think I've seen it before. Uh, there's this kid called Camille Belcourt, she's a fashion designer, it could be her design. You can go pester her."

* * *

Alec had managed to pry information from Jace about the whereabouts of said Camille. He'd tracked her down to uptown Manhattan where she had a small boutique, a typical smalltime New York one nestled in a graffiti-splattered building with white walls and white floors and the only colour infiltrating the monochrome of the room coming from the potted flowers lined neatly along the wall.

Camille Belcourt turned out to be an intimidating-looking, sewing-needle-wielding, heavily made up woman who took a single look at Alec as he walked through the door and made him permanently afraid of her. That was probably the reason she wasn't famous yet, judging by the clothes on the rack (luscious silk gowns that were glamorous enough for the red carpet yet still maintained a certain edginess, streetwear that somehow had evident Baroque elements; and every rack had at least one piece that would make anyone swoon over).

"Um, hi," said Alec.

She raised a painted eyebrow. Alec began wondering about the fatality of sewing needles.

Deciding he wanted to stay for the shortest time possible despite wasting most of the day looking for her, he hurriedly pulled out the jacket. "Is this your design?"

She took a fleeting glance at it. "Yes." Alec marveled at how perfect her posture still was.

"Um, do you happen to know where the owner is? Because I'm looking for him- er, his name is, um, Magnus Bane."

Her eyes turned even colder. "I don't know any Magnus Bane."

"Wait, but you act like you knew him-"

"Get out."

"Okay, okay, I'm getting-"

Camille slammed the door behind him, and Alec swore insults at her. Loudly.

* * *

Isabelle called him out as soon as he tried to sneak back into the apartment. "You avoided me for a day because of one leather jacket?"

Resolute, and deciding it was worth a try anyway, he sighed, saying, "His name is Magnus. Magnus Bane."

She gasped and clutched him theatrically. "You got a _boyfriend_ and you didn't even think of telling your sister. Oh, _Alec_-"

"_He's not my boyfriend_! It' s that guy. From the coffee shop, the one I was telling you about? And uh, he left this jacket the other time and I was trying to find him. Yep."

"Oh, _Alec_."

"Oh, _Izzy_."

"Hang on, the name Magnus Bane sounds familiar-"

Alec widened his eyes and felt his heart palpitating way too fast.

"He's an actor! On Coffee Spoons, the rom-com I told you cast me as their lead? You know the one where they meet in a coffeeshop and blah blah blah, well, you know. He has about two more days of filming, I think, probably because he's just a side character, but anyway. I think I can bring you on set on Friday!"

"Oh my god, really?"

Isabelle beamed and nodded.

Alec blushed ridiculously and nearly collapsed at the notion of finally seeing Magnus again after such a long search and went to sniff his pickles with a vengeance.

And sometimes, when you're searching, you might just find something else that you never expected you would find, because there are glitches in the universe, and miracles do happen.


End file.
